26 Nov 2013 UCA Sugar Bears win SLC tourney
by Levi Gilbert
What a weekend it was for the University of Central Arkansas Sugar Bear volleyball team.
The Sugar Bears marched through the Southland Conference tournament in Corpus Christi, Texas, fairly unscathed through the first two days, but in the championship match against the Northwestern State Lady Demons, they quickly found themselves down two sets to none.
“The first two sets it seemed like, I know their hearts were there, but somehow between on the court and in between their ears, I don’t think everyone was there the entire time,” said UCA volleyball assistant coach John Newberry this week on KUCA’s The Sports Beat. “Typically we like to see teams that hit the ball really hard at us all the time. That’s what we do to teams, and so when you have an opponent that is just going to tip on you, it keeps us off balance because we didn’t know if they were going to tip or hit hard. Your positioning and how you play, you don’t really have a clear mind. We just had to start completely over in the third set.”
After running the table in conference, the Sugar Bears were in danger of missing out on a return trip to the NCAA playoffs. A senior leader emerged before the third set.
“Towards the end of the second set, our senior setter and Southland Conference player of the year, setter of the year and all conference player, Marissa Collins, got pretty vocal right there in one of the timeouts,” Newberry said. “As coaches we just set back and let Marissa lead and get all the frustration out that needed to get out. It was deserved and she handled it very, very well like a senior should.
“We got to the intermission and went to our holding room. [Coach David McFatrich] goes, “Guys, are you ready?” I’ll never forget it, Shelbee Berringer, our senior libero, just said, “Yep.” And that was it. It was like a switch was made at that moment. It was basically a whole new game after that.”
UCA rebounded and was on fire the next two sets, winning the third 25-13 and the fourth 25-14 to force a fifth and final set, which the Sugar Bears took 15-12.
Heather Schnars led UCA with a match-high 16 kills. Evie Grace Singleton had a career-high 10 kills and six blocks, Paige Gantar had eight kills and nine blocks and Jessica Nagy had nine kills and two blocks. Collins recorded a double-double with 47 assists and 19 digs. Shelbee Berringer had a team-high 25 digs.
“We spread the ball around quite a bit for all of our attackers,” Newberry said. “Heather Schnars had a very consistent weekend. She had a match-high career game with 21 kills against Corpus Christi. It was really good to see her swing away. Marissa Collins was extremely consistent. She played a lot of defense before she had to transition into setting. Of course Shelbee Berringer always plays great and makes some amazing digs along with senior Beth Rogers.
“Jessica Nagy had an incredible weekend as well. I also want to mention our middle blockers: Paige Gantar, Alicia Dittrich and Fulani Petties. All three of those girls got to play an incredible part this weekend. Our middle blockers are in the Top 4 in hitting percentage in our conference, which is an incredible feat to pull off.”
Following the match, Schnars, Nagy and Collins were named to the All-SLC Tournament team, with Collins being named MVP of the tournament. The win gave the Sugar Bears the SLC’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. The Sugar Bears will find out where they’ll be heading this Sunday during the NCAA Selection Show.
“We’re going to start to see a lot taller players,” Newberry said. “It’s what our non-conference season prepared us for. We played some of the toughest in the nation. One of the teams we beat, Kansas, was No. 9. We played No. 1 Penn State and played them very tough the first two sets. And then also Arizona, we took them to four sets. We lost in five sets to No. 11 Marquette.
“We’re very experienced with this area, and we have to just deal with the size and control the ball in our passing game. We might be able to pull off an upset. That’s what we’re preparing for.”
The Sugar Bears are in the midst of an unparalleled run of success with two straight NCAA playoff berths, not to mention the individual awards and SLC titles. Newberry and his wife, Brittany, are just in their second year of coaching at UCA. It’s hard to imagine how things can possibly go up from here.
“Last year we went 30-5, and we had a lot of people say, ‘Just remember this because this will never happen again.’ Here we are a year later,” Newberry said. “We m
ade the tournament again. It’s truly a blessing to see the chemistry. It’s a much better year. We’re one of the winningest teams in the conference history. This is the highest UCA has been ranked with a brand new ranking this week of No. 45. Hopefully we can get our 30th win in the first round of the NCAA playoffs. That’s our goal.”
